Donaldina Cameron

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Donaldina Cameron (July 26, 1869 – January 4, 1968) was a Presbyterian advocate for social justice. She rescued and educated more than 3,000 Chinese slave girls and women during her long career of social reform in San Francisco, from 1895 to 1934.

The laws limiting Chinese immigration to the United States (see the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Page Act of 1875) prevented most Chinese men from sending for their families back in China. Girls and young women were shipped to the United States illegally, presenting forged papers saying they were related to upper-class Chinese men already in California. Younger girls were sold as Mui Tsais, domestic servants, while older girls and women were sold into prostitution, sometimes by their own families. Many Mui Tsais were sold into prostitution when they reached their early teens. A Chinese prostitute lived a brutal, short life, usually dying within five years.

Donaldina Cameron was born in New Zealand. When she was two years of age, she and her family moved to California. In 1895, Donaldina started working as a sewing teacher at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls, founded in 1874 by the Presbyterian Church. While working at the mission, she began to participate with the city's police in the rescue of women and girls held captive, wielding an axe during nighttime raids on cribs and brothels. With the death in 1897 of Margaret Culbertson, the mission's superintendent, Miss Cameron's responsibilities increased. In 1900, she became Superintendent of the Mission Home. Donaldina became known as "Lo Mo" or Beloved Mother to those she rescued, and "Fahn Quai," or White Devil, to those they were rescued from. She became to be known as the "Angry Angel of Chinatown."

In April 1906, the great San Francisco earthquake and fire forced evacuation of the Mission Home. Realizing that the records that gave her guardianship over the young women had been left behind, Donaldina re-eneterd the burning building to retrieve them. She then led her wards across the bay, first to Marin County and then to Oakland. While the records were saved the Mission Home itself was destroyed, one of many buildings dynamited to try to stop the spreading fire. The Mission Home was rebuilt in 1908 and remains standing today at 920 Sacramento Street. It was renamed Donaldina Cameron House in 1942 and is now a comprehensive family service agency, serving low income and other Asian immigrants and families, many residing in Chinatown. Miss Cameron also founded two homes for Chinese children who were orphans or the children of the rescued women: the Chung Mei Home for boys and the Ming Quong Home for girls. The building which housed Ming Quong is today a part of Mills College in Oakland.

After she retired, Donaldina Cameron moved to Palo Alto to be near family members. She died at age 98, on January 4, 1968. She is interred in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles.

[edit] References

Mildred Crowl Martin: Chinatown's Angry Angel, The Story of Donaldina Cameron, (Palo Alto, California, Pacific Books, 1977)
Carol Green Wilson: Chinatown Quest, (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1931 and 1950)
Andrew R. DiConti: Yankee Tsunami - The Ocean Erupts, Xlibris Corporation, 2002)
Andrew R. DiConti: Yankee Tsunami - An Engulfing Wave, Xlibris Corporation, 2003)